Project Background
At DoorDash, an analytics team has completed an evaluation of a new restaurant search ranking recommendation for the consumer app. The analysis shows a projected +2.1% increase in order conversion and +1.4% increase in gross order value, but also a likely +180ms increase in p95 search latency and a small drop in exposure for long-tail merchants. You are the program manager responsible for aligning product, engineering, and analytics on whether and how to launch.
The project team includes 1 PM, 1 EM, 4 engineers, 2 data scientists, 1 analyst, and 1 designer. Leadership wants a decision in 3 weeks so the change can be included in the next quarterly roadmap review. The recommendation matters because search drives 28% of first-session orders, and competitors have recently improved discovery relevance.
Key Stakeholders
- Product Director wants to ship quickly to hit quarterly conversion goals.
- Engineering Manager is concerned about latency regressions and operational risk during peak traffic.
- Marketplace PM is worried about reduced visibility for smaller merchants.
- Analytics Lead wants the recommendation represented accurately, including uncertainty and assumptions.
- Customer Support Lead wants a clear rollback and incident communication plan.
Constraints
- Decision deadline: 15 business days
- Engineering capacity: 4 engineers, with only 2 available full-time
- Budget: $60K for experimentation, dashboarding, and post-launch monitoring
- Peak season freeze begins in 6 weeks
- Any launch increasing p95 latency above 300ms requires VP Engineering approval
Complications
- The Product Director has already told leadership the change is "low risk" before engineering review is complete.
- A recent search incident has made engineering more conservative about production launches.
- The merchant team is asking for fairness guardrails that were not included in the original analysis.
Your Task
- Define how you would communicate the analytical recommendation to product and engineering stakeholders.
- Create an execution plan from decision review through launch or no-launch recommendation.
- Specify the trade-offs, decision criteria, and stakeholder alignment approach.
- Propose launch readiness requirements, success metrics, and rollback triggers.
- Identify the top risks and how you would mitigate them.
